The mission of H.O.P.E. is to turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth, back upstream so that Earth's evolving consciousness may explore the headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come. The work of H.O.P.E. is to make visible the larger relationships we live within - relationships that inspire visions of wonder and works of hope.

Preparing for the beginning of Chrysalis this year was a higher priority than publishing Cairns on time. The school year is off to a good start and now I can finish this issue.

A class of 4th graders and I stopped by a pond last spring. The class delighted me with how long they sat quietly and attentively as a solitary duck gradually swam closer. This particular class always asked for a "homework question" to think about so I asked: "How was watching this pond different than watching TV". My favorite answer: "Throwing a rock into it smashes the TV but just makes ripples in the pond."

My main image of the Edge is from the topography of evolution. There is an edge beyond which an individual can neither survive nor reproduce successfully. Timberline is one such example. Zonations in tide pools are another. Evolution winnows out those individuals who stray beyond the edge. We are the descendants of those creatures that stayed on the right side of the edge. Our DNA has been strongly shaped to shape us to be sensitive to edges and stay within them.

On the other hand, many of the "jackpots" in evolution have come from some movement across an edge into some newly opened or previously unexplored territory (living on land, flight). And so our DNA is rich with the inheritances of those who went across the edge. Genetically we are a paradox, full of the DNA of both those who stayed away from the edge and those who went over the edge. No wonder it is such a siren song to the spirit, calling us to dance along the ever-shimmering, ever-shifting edge between death and opportunity.

Let me share an over-the-edge story. In Shifting, after the chapter "The Storm", I write, "A few days later I was driving toward the suburbs of Los Angeles to teach at an elementary school. Upon arrival I found that the school was nearly surrounded by a huge, overgrazed field." There is a story that fits between those two sentences that I left out of Shifting.

The shift from being a wilderness naturalist to an urban teacher was a profound change in my life path. Moving to LA scared me deeply. Furthermore, I came away from those storms and the canyon country in a profoundly stranger than I realized, state of consciousness. The transition was almost violently abrupt. I drove into LA about 10 in the morning. Rush hour was over but freeway traffic was still intense and the air was smoggy. As I drove on freeways for more than an hour through continuous city, the magnitude of the transition oppressed my soul. The thought of trying to find a place to live within this vast city and having to drive through rush hour traffic every day was too much. I found myself praying. "Dear God, please help me find a place to live close enough to the school that I don't have to drive these freeways every day. And if there is anyway possible, dear God, please clean up this air."

I arrived at the Farm School and met some of my fellow teachers. One of them, Alysia, said that she and a friend were renting a house within 10 minutes bicycling distance from school and there was a spare room which I could rent until I found a place of my own. I accepted and in the course of the next few months, Alysia and I fell in love. She is now my wife, mother of my daughters, and editor of my writing.

So within minutes of arrival, my living situation was resolved. I went to bed that night in an empty room, the only "furniture" being my backpacking sleeping pad and bag. Now, remember, just a few nights before I had been sleeping in a remote canyon during a week of profound thunderstorms. Somewhere in the middle of my first LA night, I dreamed that in some strange way I was back in the canyon sleeping in my bed and a powerful midnight storm was brewing overhead. My dream mind churned about whether I should go out in the dark rain to diverge runoff if the storm broke. A night storm in the canyon with bluish-white lightning flashes and  darkness alternating faster than the eyes can dilate and invisible waterfalls roaring is a strange thing to be part of. Should I go out in the soaking darkness to fight for the soil or should I just lie through it? The storm kept brewing palpably stronger and stronger as my dream mind churned away. And then suddenly
CRACK
there was a tremendous lightning bolt/instantaneous thunderclap right overhead. The question was resolved without thought. Instinctively, in one motion,  I turned out of bed onto the floor, reached for the mattock and headed for the cabin door and found myself rising up off the floor standing in this strange bare room very disoriented as to where I was because rain was pouring outside. A lightning bolt had just struck the telephone pole outside my new city dwelling, waking everybody. A tremendous thunderstorm was centered right over our house. For an hour it poured. I awoke the next morning to clear air.

I truly believe that my consciousness was an essential ingredient in the formation of that storm. I don't understand how and I don't say this with messianic aspirations and I could never replicate it. I share the story because it unsettles the "fat around the edges" viewpoint of "who am I and why am I here?" that can develop in the day-to-day routines that can easily shape our lives and spirits. The Universe is very mysterious and Life is a deep dive into the Unknown and we don't really understand yet who we are.

(As a related aside, my intuition tells me that we are leaving LaLa Land, the name my subconscious has given to the cultural aura surrounding Wall Street's bull market. I try not to pay much attention to financial markets but in the last few years, a strange brew of lavish wealth founded on nothing but anticipation of yet more wealth has marinated the culture. I sense this is coming to an end and I anticipate its ending as much as I look forward to waking up in my sleeping bag out on a cold mountain morning after too many weeks in a soft bed inside. It's invigorating to get back to the real world's Spartan abundance. A bear market is an opportunity to wake up from a dream and return to the real work, the real wealth of life. I say this simply so that if the bull market turns into a full bear market, then my statement will be one clump of grass among hopefully many helping to slow the flood of potentially erosive cultural lamentations.)

I've been thinking about the Edge while playing with a concept that is batted around within our church. Does the intent of our spirits shape the world or does the world shape our spirits? The storm story suggests that the intent of our spirits can shape the world. But a huge pile of evidence also suggests otherwise.

This issue underlies our culture's current schism between "reductionism" and "holism". The ideologies of reductionism, behaviorism and materialism dominate our culture. Several counter-movements don't like the direction this dominant group is taking the culture. Barricades are thrown up and sniper shots exchanged. Like tidal forces between moons and planets, the tension can pull a body apart. "Gaia" is a prominent battlefield. The reductionists, because of their specialization, had a hard time seeing how Gaia emerges from the great web of planetary interactions in a way analogous to mind arising from the great web of neuronal connections. On the other side of the schism, some sever Gaia's biological roots so they can carry her far into the metaphysical realm.

Taking several steps back from this schism, I see the "reductionist" side citing an overwhelming abundance of documented evidence to support their point of view. (The best evidence is the fact that this group controls much of the economic, political, and cultural power of this planet. It's hard to pull this off unless you've got something right.) The other side cites evidence that is much more anecdotal (like my storm story), much less pervasive within the everyday world, much less replicable and yet possessing a mysteriously appealing aura that makes it hard to ignore or dismiss.  Both sides argue for their side and against the other.

The reductionist mode can make us passive, make us feel like helpless victims. The other side can entrap us in wishful fantasies, cause us to overlook some "unpleasant" aspects of the world, or overwhelm us with guilty feelings of not thinking positive enough thoughts. But though the two sides seem to be contradictory and mutually exclusive, they can actually be understood as both true and complementary when they are placed within a unifying feedback loop. It's analogous to the way in which Darwin's insight of the environment shaping life and Lovelock's insight of life shaping the environment combine into a feedback-interconnected dance that unifies life and its environment into something greater and more mysterious and precious (Gaia). So it is with our consciousness and the world around us. On the Edge, both can dance together with more power than anyone at the barricades imagines. Neither, alone, contains the majesty and the hard-to-predict power of a snowballing feedback loop that they possess together.

The world shapes our minds and our minds shape the world. The energy can flow both ways. However, the flow is not equal. There is good reason why the reductionists have such a huge body of evidence in support of their position. Human consciousness is a recent arrival in a Universe shaped by billions of years of physical law's cause and effect. The vast majority of the world we perceive is best explained in a mechanistic way. But a feedback loop does not have to be equal in both directions. And feedback loops can grow. We might be witnessing the infancy of a (in the future) powerful feedback loop. The strange fluky anecdotal things could be the stirrings (like a baby's first kicks within the mother) of something that will grow bigger and stronger.

I imagine this happening in a way like life colonized land. I imagine lichen-like crusts within slickrock channels turning green for a few hours after a rain. All else is rock. All else is environment-dominated absence of life. But gradually, by trapping sand grains to build a proto-soil, these plants create conditions for yet more plants to grow, to spread further. Slowly, the feedback loop of life changing the environment grows stronger. This image helps me understand how "feeble" consciousness can be growing more present, more influential within a highly mechanistic universe. I try my best to keep an open mind while keeping as firmly footed as possible in the marvelous physical cause and effects of this world revealed by science, no less a wonder than the other stirrings. I try to dance on the Edge that unites them.

Independent of these specifics is this conceptual tool: whenever we encounter two factions arguing over what appears to be contradictory propositions (especially if they reduce down to an "If A, then B" side and an "If B, then A" side) and if both sides are citing evidence in support of their position, it is worthwhile to consider whether both sides are right and are grappling with a feedback loop more encompassing than they realize.

Clean-up as part of ceremony

Robert Sund writes in an essay in Gary Snyder: Dimensions of a Life. "The Tea Master, Okakura Kakuzo, traveling in America in 1906, noticed that Americans are good at beginning things, but not at ending them....The Tea Ceremony always concludes with washing utensils and putting them away. The cleanup is not something that comes after the ceremony is over; it's as important as any point along the way. Not to be put off and tended to later. Washing cleans the slate; it is an ultimate respect....The capacity to finish something is no slight thing!"

I like this idea of cleaning up as part of the ceremony. I've helped put together several events over the last 10 years and clean-up has usually been done afterwards by a few dedicated people. Cleaning up the mess of all can be discouraging work--especially after the event. But at our church's retreats, clean-up is part of the group work. It goes quickly, very mindfully, and enjoyably. Ending the event before clean-up teaches that work and pleasure are separate. A sad lesson to unconsciously learn. At Chrysalis, we clean up at the end of each day. But I haven't tried embroidering it in ceremony. I'll work on that.

A benediction that came to me while walking in the Redwoods this summer:

Go forth
and make a difference
in the best way you can.

Not the biggest way--
that is the wrong direction--
but the best.
 

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© 1998, Paul Krafel, 18080 Brincat Manor, Cottonwood, CA 96022-0609
Permission is granted to copy and distribute (for free) this material as long as you attach this copyright notice and my addresses so that a future reader can track down the source.

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